This invention pertains generally to building construction techniques and more specifically to clamps used to temporarily hold objects during a step in construction.
Modern building construction techniques rely on the coordination of specialized tradesmen capable of quickly entering a job site and performing a next step in a construction project. Each trade is responsible for its own layout, rough, and finish work stages which sometimes must be interleaved with the work stages of other trades. An example of this is the layout and roughing-in of piping for a building, usually a residential building, having a concrete slab foundation. As many of the services of the building, particularly Drain Waste and Vent (DWV) piping, must be routed underneath the building, these services must be laid-out and roughed-in before the concrete slab is poured and surfaced.
Since each trade is only on a job site during their respective work stages, the work of one trade may interfere with the work of another. For example, sometimes when a slab foundation is poured and surfaced, the process dislodges the roughed-in services of other trades. While usually not fatal to the overall project, a tradesman must sometimes expend additional efforts to correct a dislodged service after the slab foundation has cured. In addition, sometimes a tradesman's rough-in work interferes with the pouring of the slab. For example, if a vertical piping run is placed too close to a concrete form this prevents poured concrete from effectively filing the space between the piping run and the concrete form. Once the concrete form is removed, there may be an unsightly or even structurally significant defect in the unfinished side of the concrete slab.
To prevent such occurrences, tradesmen doing rough-in work around concrete forms typically use the concrete forms as anchoring surfaces to which the roughed-in services are temporarily tied. The methods of tying a roughed-in service to a concrete form are usually ad-hoc as the tradesmen use whatever materials may laying around to make the temporary connection to the concrete form. For example, for DWV services, the DWV piping is typically tied to the concrete form using a combination of nails and plumber's tape or wire. This method is not only time consuming, but may result in damage to the piping run when the concrete form is removed if the piping run is too tightly bound to the concrete form.
Therefore a need exists for a method to tie piping runs to concrete forms temporarily that is both efficient to install and reduces damage to a piping run when the concrete form is removed. Various aspects of the present invention meet such a need.